“Having fantastic people around you is essential”

Huub Waterval is the founder and CEO of one of the top Salesforce consulting firms in Europe: Nextview Consulting. The company is specialized in finding the best solutions for their clients' businesses using Design Thinking tools. 

Fe+male Tech Heroes role models #27 Huub Waterval

The 42-year-old lives in Maastricht, which he lovingly sees as the center of Europe: "The only problem is that a lot of other stuff is far away from it," he jokes. He describes himself as a very loyal person, happy to keep lifelong close friends who he cites as great supporters and believers in his competence.

Beyond the profitable side of the business, Huub has raised relevant discussions among his colleagues, such as environmental concerns and the establishment of a (real) gender-equal workplace. Nevertheless, Huub says he doesn't consider himself a philanthropist but sees these initiatives as part of a well-developed, Great Places to Work winning company.

Why have you decided to do more than work merely for profit?

Amid the financial crisis, we started Nextview with a bold objective: grow it to 5 million in revenue in five years. We heard we were crazy in doing so. Nevertheless, we achieved that goal, and we fulfilled the promise I had made if we did: we climbed one of the highest mountains in Austria in 2014. While the entire team celebrated, I thought: "what's next?" Only thinking about the revenue growth wasn't inspiring to me. So I started an MBA during which I learned about purpose-driven enterprises and B Corp, a sort of certification for companies that do business as a force for good: I discovered that these have a higher performance compared to others. So, I understood that this approach would help us position ourselves uniquely. [..]